Such greediness will only lead to disappointment when these publications will find out, in fact, the Microsoft is
delivering a message chocked full of lies. Microsoft is apparently so incredibly paranoid about the rest of the real story
getting out that its rumored they have resulted to gestapo threats to keep would-be information-leaking slave^H^H^Hemployees
in line.

Why would Microsoft go out of their way to diffuse their current public responses with utter crap and yet threaten to
completely ruin the lives of employees who even answer a phone call from a reporter? Perhaps the real story makes the
anti-trust issue look like a good thing.
href="http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2595631,00.html?chkpt=zdnnrla">I wonder what Larry Ellison’s up
to?

I started the trip by trying to find a parking space closer to the center of town. Since I’ve spent most of my trips
walking through Salem (I’m only a 5 minute walk from the town center) I didn’t realize how much of a pain-in-the-ass parking
is in October. (Duh)

I parked 2 blocks from my house. Worthless. So I walked towards the town common and hit every
href="http://www.samcostumes.com">costume shop, witch store,
href="http://www.plads.com/antiques/index.htm">antique dealer and arts/crafts place I could. The only thing I came out
with was a beautifully smelling handmade broom. I was not a happy camper.

There were several things on my list I was *sure* I could get at some of the stores I headed to. However the
href="http://www.lauriecabot.com/unfinished.html">place I remember seeing Emu eggs at discontinued them. So I picked up my
broom there instead.

I went to a few renaissance clothing stores and several costume shops to try and find the belt, shirt and parasol. No one
had real leather belts and all the black shirts were upwards of $80 to $200. I’m not paying that much for a Halloween costume.
My belt search was no better. Stores either had regular leather belts or wide, crappy plastic ones from “pirate costumes in a
bag.” And no one had a pink parasol in site - not even the antique shops. One woman told me it’s because the old ones have
rotted away. However my mother had one up in her attic before she moved and must have given it away at a yard sale.

So I walked back to my car with the broom in a large bag and then, tired and dejectedly, drove home. I decided to see what
I could find on the Web since I had already ordered my beard, wig
and mustache set on one site. Sure enough, I found a
href="http://www.renstore.com/cgi-bin/Renstore.storefront/39f9b3860019cdc62740d8a19aef0753/Product/View/VAG&2DE003&2D1″>great
black shirt that was just my size. I should be getting both the beard and shirt by Saturday.

All that was left was “Norbert” and the “
href="http://www.cliphoto.com/potter/harrycatch.jpg">Golden Snitch“. So I called around to a few crafts stores (
href="http://www.acmoore.com/">AC Moore, Jo-Ann’s Fabrics and Crafts, and
href="http://www.michaels.com/">Michaels) to see if they had an emu egg. No luck - but they did have Styrofoam ostrich
eggs. Good enough for me. I headed over to the mall where I found the rest of my supplies.

From AC Moore, I got my Styrofoam ostrich egg, a Styrofoam ball for the “Golden Snitch", gold and black Styrofoam spray
paint, 2 different types of angel wings for the snitch (in the doll section) and Styrofoam-safe glue. Finding the stuffed
dragon that I could steal the wings and tail from was far more difficult. The first mall I went to had two educational toy
stores. I had to go to the second local mall where the KBToys and
href="http://www.toysrus.com">Toys R Us were to find what I was looking for.

After I picked up my dragon, I started looking
for a place to find a good pair of boots. The 3 shoe stores I went to were charging huge amounts of money for shoes I’d wear
out in six months. As it turns out JC Pennys (a place I wouldn’t have been caught dead in as a kid), had a great pair of Big
Mac oil-resistant, waterproof, tan work boots with a 6in steel toe. Ahhhhhh and they had a 13W. I was in heaven.

I’ll put a series of pictures up as I’m making the various costume parts and props. I know I get annoyed when people talk
about doing stuff but leave no information about HOW they did it for the artistically-challenged like me.

10/26/2000

My condolences to Jeffrey Zeldman on the death of his
mother. Unfortunately, the only family funeral I’ve ever been to was my Great-Grandmother’s. Recently I went to my
second-funeral ever, the mother of my old UMass boss. I guess I should be thankful that no one close to me has ever died. But
being sheltered from death, I believe, only makes me less prepared to face it.

UPDATE: I e-mailed Prof. Raskin who
mentioned that a “Nader Trader” is already underway at:
href="http://www.nadertrader.org">http://www.nadertrader.org. Please pass the word.

For the last few months, I’ve been a staunch supporter of Ralph Nader. Primarily
because I just got tired of listening to Al Gore and hearing him couch each and every statement, answer and comment to
whatever audience he was addressing to the point where what he was saying was completely devoid of any truth or heart. I can’tstand that!

Anyway, it wasn’t until this week that I started to worry that my vote for Nader could put George W Bush in the White
House. I can’t bear not to vote with my heart - my convictions are important to me at this stage of my life. At the same time,
I’m newly married and thinking of a family. I don’t want someone like Bush
href="http://www.issues2000.org/George_W__Bush.htm#Abortion” title="Can he make up his mind?">dictating policy over my wife’s
ovaries, laughing off alternative religions, or
title="OK, biased, I know…but still a decent analysis. I just don’t like Bush. Can you tell??">making tax cuts that
primarily benefit the rich. It’s ridiculous.

I’m still going to vote Nader, because Massachusetts
title="Doesn’t mean they were always right….and they did vote Republican a few times">has always voted strongly
Democratic. But what about other states? American University professor
href="http://www.wcl.american.edu/faculty/raskin/index.html">Jamin Raskin has come up with
href="http://slate.msn.com/Concept/00-10-24/Concept.asp">a phenomenal idea. It basically goes like this: Nader supporters
vote in states where Gore is hard-pressed to get votes provided Gore supporters in swing-states hold fast. It’s a little
risque and strays from the “vote with your heart” principle that I’ve been touting for the last few weeks. However if I could
guarantee that my second choice gets elected and still give Nader enough votes to get funding for the next election (and be
able to participate in debates) then I’m all for it!

I’m getting totally obsessed with this “Hagrid” (Harry Potter) costume I’ve been working on. Hagrid is described as having
beetle-black eyes. Therefore I spent a good bit of time scouring the Web for theater or costume contacts that would render my
eyes “beetle-black” instead of the hazel-green that they are. The most prominent on the Web seems to be “
href="http://www.wild-eyes.com">Wild Eyes“. Unfortunately they only seem to have specialty contacts with specific costumes
in mind. They have a “red hot” option that is all red
but that seemed to be it.

I stopped into the optometrist at the mall while running some errands and noticed they sold Wild Eyes. I explained my
quandary and asked if they knew of anyone who might sell plain, black contacts. She mentioned that a company called
href="http://www.coopervision.com">Cooper Vision had a line coming out but they haven’t received anything yet.

I took to the Web and found the Cooper Vision Web site down…but found their new “
href="http://www.aclens.com/crazylenses.htm">Crazy Lenses” line at ACLens.com. Hmmm.
Still no luck.

However….on the same site, I found a line called “GameFace” whichdoes have different single-color lenses. Excellent!

Well, sort of. Then I realize that I still need to get an eye exam in order to have the contact lenses fitted. Blech.

I finally stabilized my SHOUTcast server. Since all
href="http://www.brain-stream.com/radio/currentplaylist.html">my MP3s are on my laptop, I created
href="http://radio.brain-stream.com">a stable server on a machine with a static IP and broadcast from my laptop through
that server. I’ve got 2 relay servers rebroadcasting the static server - one on my laptop and another on a static machine.

I still have some tweaking to do but it’s coming along quite well. I hope to give people direct access to be able to
“listen” and view the current song without having to connect to the main server page first. Stay tuned…..

10/23/2000

I am addicted to Harry Potter. Which is quite surprising considering I hadn’t read
or listened to any of the books until the last week in September. Kirky had just gotten back from visiting her parents who let
her borrow the first two books (”Sorcerer’s Stone“
and “Chamber of Secrets“) on tape. So I
begrudgingly listened to them so I could get caught up to where she was and we could both listen to them on the way to our
vacation on Cape Cod.

Wow.

I was hooked. I had already like SciFi/Fantasy books but this one was different. I can’t articulate my interest in these
books but suffice it to say we spent a day walking through Provincetown on vacation looking for the next 2 books on tape (”
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807282316/brainstream">Prisoner of Azkaban” and “
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807282588/brainstream">Goblet of Fire“)
and purchased them as well. I am eagerly awaiting the fifth book and the movie planned to be released next year. I’m even
working on a Halloween costume to become Rubeous Hagrid the
Hogswart Gameskeeper. (Yes, I may be a little old for trick-or-treating but when you live in a town like Salem, MA….the
entire month of October is Halloween and everyone participates.)

You’ll see snippets here and there about new movie casting announcements or bits of gossip for the book. I’m so tired of
the lack of fansites out there that I’m tempted to make one myself.

What a pain-in-the-ass morning. I’m working at home this week since most of ZOT
Group staff is off at ApacheCon 2000 Europe. I asked Kirky to stay home so she
could give marching orders to the guy we’ve hired to finish painting out kitchen for us. We’ve quickly realized over the past
year of owning a house that it’s much easier to pay someone to do the job right the first time then to do it poorly ourselves
and have to pay someone to fix it.

This guy was originally scheduled to come a few weeks ago. It would have been done if it wasn’t for him “penciling me in”
and waiting for a confirmation. He didn’t think to call me and see what’s up - he just erased me out of his book. That
particular day, Kirky waited at home for 3 hours and ended up taking the day off.

So she rescheduled it to this morning and waited. In between waiting, we lost my cell phone. Kirky did a phenomenal job
cleaning the living room and kitchen while I was being a slug all weekend and somehow we lost my cell phone. I looked
everywhere, blaming her for moving it since I had remembered turning it off early in the morning when the batteries went dead.
Sure enough after an hour of “The Blame Game” she found it in the front seat of the car- where I had left it while running
errands yesterday.

It’s now 2hrs 20min since the time Kirky had written down that this guy was going to come. She called him at his office
with no response, left a message and finally left for work an hour ago.

10/21/2000

I love my cats…..really, I do. However two weekends ago when I was doing laundry in the basement, I opened up the 3
windows that had hand-made screens I put together based on kits from Home Depot. As I headed downstairs to do another load, I
noticed our oldest cat Chelsie (an 11 year old white American shorthair) sitting outside one of the windows.

I FREAKED. Chelsie had lived outside several years ago when she was staying with Kirky’s parents. I had always feared she
longed for that time again. But true to my prediction, she popped back inside after I opened a can of wet cat food within
ear-shot. It wasn’t for an hour later that I realized Nessa (our cute imp of a gray Maine coon…1 yr old in June) was
nowhere to be found. I walked all over the neighborhood, in our neighbor’s backyards and just sat inside. Kirky was at her
grandmother’s and I was alone. Finally I caught sight of her in our neighbor’s yard a little while later. I headed out with
the can of food and ….she didn’t fall for it.

So I chased her back into the front. Sure enough, she ran around the front yard and sat in front of the window. Although
for some reason….she wouldn’t go in. Kirky arrived to find me distraught and went to the basement. One “cat-calling” later
and Nessa was in her arms. *sigh* I just don’t have the right touch.

Kirky was in the basement while I was still sleeping this morning cleaning up. I looked out the front door after I slumped
down the stairs and, much to my horror, found Chelsie outside again. Kirky was livid…since she had just repaired the screen
before leaving the window open. However she was the calmist of the two of us and I remained depressed, paranoid and sat
nursing a painful headache resulting from oversleeping.

Almost 8 hours later, (after we shut Chelsie in the upstairs bedroom) Nessa came meowing her way saunteringly into the
living room in search of food and a place to use the bathroom. Harrumph. What are we? A cat hotel

I couldn’t have been happier. Needless to say, we’ll be affixing both of them with new collars and I’m tempted to inject them
both with GPS locating transmitters.

So I’ve been playing with my SHOUTcast server…..and am going crazy. I am running the server off my
laptop, and due to various bandwidth restrictions, can only have 6 listeners at once. So I set up 2 relay servers. But since
I’m on a laptop and can be connected at any number of places, I created a
“forward” that I could point these servers to. In my httpd.conf file, I’d redirect this forward to wherever my laptop was
connected.

So now I’ve got this problem of my relay servers connecting to my primary one and not following-through with the forward.
Grrrrrrr. Back to the drawing board. I think one of my relay servers will become the primary server since they’re static. Not
what I wanted….but oh well.

However, despite past nonsensical articles, this one covers both sides well. I think Bulger has an excellent point about
needing to move quickly as it often appears that everything political at UMass seems to go slower than molasses undulating
uphill in January. I say this from personal experience of being a student representative in my time at UMass on several IT
committees including that of the Faculty Senate. However I also agree with many of the sentiments of the professors. If no
academic guidelines have been discussed nor has it been made clear who owns rights to what is taught, then UMass Online will
have some serious problems.

I hate to do the big “In my day” speech, but when I first went to UMass I caused havoc being the first undergraduate to
have an on-campus Web site at the University, was responsible for the creation of many departmental and division Web sites on
campus, and was the only student in my classes who was looking up the e-mails of people who wrote the books and papers I had
to read for class and ask them questions. Many professors were still getting used to the whole idea of e-mail and the Web (and
this was in 1994-1998), many fearful of having to learn about it.

You can’t rush this process without covering the bases needed in order to stem the fears of both the teachers
and students. You can’t mandate change without their being clear contingencies, guidelines, and comfort level
with the process. Otherwise students will suffer. Keep the pace up but don’t just address the logistics of getting the systems
up and online - take care of the people problems too.

The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education has
href="http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/daily/10/17/laptops_required.html">unanimously decided to require all students to
purchase laptops at the state’s many colleges and Universities. They will, of
course, give vouchers to low income students, those with financial aid, and I’m sure anyone getting scholarships will have
their latop as part of the deal. Being the intrepid (read: nosy) soul that I am, I’ve pestered the plan’s
href="http://yahoo.marketguide.com/mgi/biograph.asp?nss=yahoo&rt=biograph&rn=9349A#Offr_37692″>chief architect via e-mail
and managed to get someone to send me an electronic copy of the plan. It’s in powerpoint, but you can still read it.
href="files/umasslaptopplan2000.ppt">Here it is - note that it’s 600K in size. If you’re too cheap to buy Office, then
download their Powerpoint Viewer.

I’m waiting for the political fallout from this plan to hit the street. UMass Amherst, (my
alma mater), is very well-known across New England to have a lot of protest-happy (read: whiny) graduate students. Don’t get
me wrong…I’m all for a little civil disobedience now and again however these people protest over the pettiest things and
often have no concept of real world issues. Unfortunately, it appears that the student newspaper
href="http://www.dailycollegian.com">The Daily Collegian appears to be “under construction” so all I can do is watch localWMass news and keep an eye on the UMass-scandal-happy Boston Globe. Who knows…maybe
the well-written faculty and staff paper Campus Chronicle will also have some
great stuff.

Ugg. I can’t believe I’m actually developing a Web site after all these years. It’s been nice having my
href="http://www.zotgroup.com">work site as my only responsibility for many months…and since we’re a Web standards
consultancy, the site is pretty standards-compliant (read: non-flashy). But I just have too much to say and talk about…so
I’m afraid it’s time to crank this Blog out. This site will change quite a few times over the next few weeks….but mostly
because I’m trying to get the design right.